As Redistricting War Looms, Republicans Have More Plausible Gerrymandering Targets than Democrats

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— President Trump pushing Texas Republicans to squeeze more seats out of the Lone Star State has led to the possibility of other states on both sides trying to draw new maps.

— California stands out as a state where Democrats could potentially get several extra seats through a gerrymander, but their path toward doing so is much more complicated than the Republican path in Texas.

— Looking across the entire country, Republicans appear to have easier opportunities for drawing new gerrymanders than Democrats. Ohio was already set to likely produce a better map for Republicans, and there are other options too.

— In states where Democrats control the state government and might want to draw themselves additional seats, there are often roadblocks that don’t exist in Republican-leaning states.

The national redistricting picture as Texas ponders a remap

Earlier this week, the Texas state legislature started a special session that is slated to address congressional redistricting. At the behest of President Trump’s administration, Texas Republicans will consider creating a map that goes further than their preexisting partisan gerrymander, which produced a GOP delegation advantage of 25-13 in its two cycles of existence.

Armin Thomas of Split Ticket showed how Republicans could attempt to net an additional five seats out of Texas by targeting a couple of currently Democratic districts in South Texas (something we noted when news of a possible Texas re-gerrymander broke a month ago), as well as a couple of additional seats in Houston and another in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Republicans wouldn’t necessarily be guaranteed to win all of these seats in the context of 2026, particularly if it’s a Democratic-leaning midterm environment, but they certainly could. This caveat is worth remembering throughout this article: Just because a map is redrawn to produce a certain outcome does not mean that it will definitively produce that outcome, nor does the possibility of a mid-decade redraw necessarily mean such a redraw actually will occur (mid-decade redraws not forced by courts are not unprecedented, but they also are not common). And the potential exists for lawsuits on any new district map, based on both the particulars of state law (which differ, as you’ll see) as well as federal law, such as complying with the Voting Rights Act when drawing certain minority districts. But there are no federal prohibitions on partisan gerrymandering—there could be, and there perhaps should be, but there are not. Members of Congress also often do not want to see their districts changed, but they don’t have a formal role in drawing their districts. State legislators, though, may eventually want to be members of the U.S. House themselves, which could impact their thinking and prompt them to consider options other than maximizing party gains.

Texas draws districts in a traditional way, with the state legislature drawing a map and sending it to the governor for approval. Several decades ago, the state was known for Democratic gerrymanders; now it is known for Republican ones. Famously, Texas Republicans re-drew their state’s map in 2003, replacing a previously court-drawn map that was similar to a Democratic gerrymander from the 1990s with their own gerrymander. Paul Kane of the Washington Post recounted the history in a column over the weekend. Republicans ended up netting six seats from Texas in 2004. There is no federal prohibition on mid-decade congressional redistricting, although some states do or do not allow it (or are unclear about it). Texas allows it.

The Texas re-gerrymander is, understandably, infuriating Democrats, and Democratic leaders have been making noise about trying to compensate for losses in Texas by trying to gerrymander in states where they control the state government.

California stands out, as Gov. Gavin Newsom—who is clearly trying to bolster his national standing as he is termed out of office in 2026 and eying a 2028 presidential bid—has suggested the possibility of trying to enact a Democratic gerrymander in his state. As we’ll discuss below, this is much more challenging than the Republican plan in Texas.

Meanwhile, Republicans could get redistricting-related gains elsewhere: Ohio is the likeliest, but perhaps they could eye other states. Democrats, on the other hand, do not really have obvious gerrymandering options, as the states they control are more likely to have redistricting commissions or other restrictions on gerrymandering. Or, in states where they have gerrymandered, they may already be effectively tapped out.

What follows is a survey of the district maps in all 50 states, grouped into several different categories. We used All About Redistricting, our own reading of state constitutions, and conversations with sources for some of the legal details and possibilities; we welcome feedback from readers, particularly those who may interpret the particulars in a given state differently than we do. We will no doubt be revisiting this topic in future issues.

States with more than 20 districts: California (43-9 Democratic), Florida (20-8 Republican), New York (19-7 Democratic), Texas (25-12 Republican, with one Safe Democratic vacancy)

Texas is already discussed above and is effectively the news peg for this entire discussion. What Texas wants to do will become clear soon.

California, meanwhile, is much more complicated.

Voters in 2010 approved a state constitutional amendment creating an independent redistricting commission. Democrats have had a lot of success in U.S. House races there since the creation of the commission. Their edge in the state delegation was just 34-19 following the 2010 election, and after two rounds of redistricting and a good deal of electoral success, it is now 43-9. Republicans might cite this as evidence that the commission is biased against them, although it is likely the case that an unconstrained Democratic legislature could position Democrats to win more seats in the heavily blue state than the commission did (and California has gotten bluer over the last decade and a half, even taking into account Donald Trump’s relative improvement in the state in 2024). Punchbowl News’s Ally Mutnick and Jake Sherman reported last week that California Democrats might try to squeeze up to half a dozen extra seats out of the state, although there would be a lot of contortions required. Vance Ulrich, a Democratic consultant in the state, floated a map showing how that might be possible. Whether such a map would be drawn, would be legal, and would work as intended is unknown.

And unlike Republicans in Texas, Democrats can’t just impose their will in California through the legislature drawing the map and the governor signing off on it. The commission is written into the state constitution, but Democratic state legislators could place an issue on the ballot asking voters to empower them on redistricting—they would need 2/3rds majorities in each chamber of the state legislature to present a constitutional amendment to voters, but Democrats do control 3/4s of the seats in each chamber of the legislature, so they could do it even without complete party unity (and there are skeptics of a California redraw on the left, as Politico’s Jeremy B. White and Nicholas Wu reported last week). Additionally, there is an argument that has emerged that because the state constitution does not speak specifically on the timing of redistricting, Democrats could say that the commission only draws lines following the census, allowing the state legislature to intervene now (that seems like a real stretch legally and, as always, there will be lawyers—for more on the California question, see this exchange between California experts Paul Mitchell and Matt Rexroad). It’s also unclear whether voters in a Democratic-dominated state would disregard previous Democratic arguments about nonpartisan redistricting and re-open the door to gerrymandering, but the Texas move may have a radicalizing effect on Democratic voters. Or maybe Newsom is just bluffing as a way to make Texas Republicans think twice about their new gerrymander.

The point here is that Democrats might be able to redraw California, but it is a much more complicated task than it is for Republicans to redraw Texas. And California attempting to counter Texas is not the only mid-decade redraw potentially on the table. As we go through other states, we see more opportunities for Republicans than Democrats.

Republican-leaning Florida and Democratic-leaning New York, the nation’s two other megastates, help illustrate this dynamic. The Republican state would have an easier time redrawing than the Democratic one.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) pushed his GOP-controlled legislature to enact a significantly more pro-Republican map than they were initially planning in advance of 2022. The map has been a success, with Republicans winning 20-8 edges in the state in the last two elections. Florida’s state constitution was amended by voters in 2010 to say that congressional districts cannot be “drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent,” but the state Supreme Court may not enforce that against a new Republican gerrymander, unlike the less conservative Supreme Court of the 2010s that intervened against a Republican-drawn map in advance of 2016. The current Florida state Supreme Court just ruled against Democrats and their allies in their bid to restore a substantially Black, Democratic-leaning district in North Florida. Gray Rohrer of USA Today Florida reported earlier this week that Florida Republicans could potentially draw a new map; political trends in South Florida combined with a sharper Republican gerrymander could allow them to squeeze more seats out of the state. DeSantis does seem to have less influence over the legislature now than he did several years ago following his failed presidential campaign, but Trump himself could try to intervene.

Meanwhile, in New York state, Democrats already used a legal gambit to re-open redistricting in advance of 2024 after an aggressive gerrymander was blocked by courts in advance of 2022 (the state uses a weak commission system written into the state constitution by voters last decade). New York too has constitutional language saying that districts shouldn’t favor or disfavor candidates of specific parties, but the constitution also indicates that mid-decade redistricting without a court order is not allowed. State legislative Democrats only ended up making modest modifications to the previously court-drawn map for 2024, though. In our new book on the 2024 election, Campaign of Chaos, I analyzed the New York map and found that Democrats likely would have performed just as well on the 2022 map if it had been in effect in 2024, with the possible exception of Rep. Tom Suozzi (D, NY-3). Democrats appear to be unable to ask voters to change the state constitution on redistricting by 2026 because of the state’s rules: A statewide constitutional amendment has to be approved by the legislature in two consecutive sessions (with an election in between) in order to go before voters, so such a vote could only come after 2026.

With redistricting, it may be the case that some things we think are possible are not, or that things we think are not possible actually are. But Florida seems to have a path toward a redraw benefiting Republicans, while New York may not have a similar path toward a redraw benefiting Democrats in advance of 2026.

Big state with a new map coming: Ohio (10-5 Republican)

Let’s look at the other states. Ohio should start the conversation, because a remap there favoring Republicans was the one seeming redistricting certainty when this election cycle started.

Ohio’s current map, which only has a 10-5 Republican edge thanks to Reps. Emilia Sykes (D, OH-13) and Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9) winning the state’s two most competitive seat, is sunsetting for 2026. Republicans should be able to exercise more power over the process than they did in 2022, thanks to what very likely will be a more pliant state Supreme Court. There are still some hoops that Republicans need to jump through, and it’s possible that Democrats and their allies could force a statewide referendum on a new map: Andrew Tobias of Signal Ohio has a great overview of the process. But the bottom line is that Republicans may be able to squeeze an additional 2-3 seats out of the state.

States that already have Democratic maps: Illinois (14-3 Democratic), Maryland (7-1 Democratic), Nevada (3-1 Democratic), Oregon (5-1 Democratic)

Could Democrats counter in states where they gerrymandered or tried to gerrymander in 2026? There are not surefire, obvious options, although Democrats could hypothetically give it a try in a few of these states.

Illinois is the biggest state with a clear Democratic gerrymander. Illinois Democrats could try to redraw, but they would likely be challenged to go further than they already have. The same is the case with Oregon, where a Democratic gerrymander performed as intended in 2024 but not 2022. In advance of 2022, Maryland Democrats tried to give themselves a chance to win all eight seats in the state, but a lower court judge blocked them, and they reached a compromise on the current 7-1 map with then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R) that effectively re-ran their gerrymander from the 2010s. Maryland now has a Democratic governor, Wes Moore, but Hogan appointees still hold a majority on the state’s highest court. So that court and/or a lower court could frown on an 8-0 map. Still, Maryland Democratic House Majority Leader David Moon said he introduced a bill Tuesday to re-open congressional redistricting if any other state redraws its maps mid-decade. Nevada now has divided government following Gov. Joe Lombardo’s (R) win in 2022, which already practically prevents a Democratic re-gerrymander, and the current 3-1 Democratic gerrymander is under some strain as currently constructed: Trump carried NV-3, held by Rep. Susie Lee (D), in 2024, but Lee won a competitive reelection.

Republican-drawn, multi-district states that could still target Democratic seats: Indiana (7-2 Republican), Kansas (3-1 Republican), Kentucky (5-1 Republican), Missouri (6-2 Republican), North Carolina (10-4 Republican)

This is a group of states where there may be more meat on the bone for Republican line-drawers.

There was some discussion in 2021 and 2022 about Republicans in Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri targeting Democratic-held districts in northwest Indiana (IN-1), Louisville (KY-3), and Kansas City (MO-5). For various reasons, Republicans opted not to do this in the last round of redistricting. But perhaps they could in advance of 2026. Kentucky seems least likely to redraw, as the state Supreme Court could intervene if Republicans tried to carve up the Louisville seat (Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor, could veto a new map, but that is not a real obstacle as Republicans could easily override him). But these are states to watch if Republicans are looking for places to gerrymander beyond the obvious states of Ohio and Texas.

North Carolina Republicans were given a free hand to gerrymander following the GOP takeover of the state’s Supreme Court in 2022. They drew a new map for 2024 that netted them three new seats and nearly a fourth, the Trump-won NC-1 in northeast North Carolina held by Rep. Don Davis (D). Meanwhile, Kansas Republicans targeted Rep. Sharice Davids (D, KS-3) to some degree in a blue-trending seat in the Kansas City suburbs. Despite seeing the Democratic strength of her district reduced, Davids won fairly easily in both 2022 and 2024. Republicans in both states could hypothetically try to target these Democrats again. Both states do have Democratic governors, but Kansas Republicans could override a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, and North Carolina governors have no role in the redistricting process.

Mutnick and Sherman from Punchbowl noted on Tuesday in a roundup of possible Republican gerrymandering targets that the Kansas legislature does not meet again until next year, and Kelly wouldn’t call a special legislative session to facilitate a Republican congressional gerrymander (that also applies to Beshear in Kentucky). Additionally, they also identified the aforementioned Missouri as a state where a gerrymander targeting MO-5 is apparently already under strong consideration.

States with more than two districts and all-Democratic or all-Republican delegations, and where the congressionally dominant party also controls state government: Arkansas (4-0 Republican), Connecticut (5-0 Democratic), Iowa (4-0 Republican), Massachusetts (9-0 Democratic), Nebraska (3-0 Republican), New Mexico (3-0 Democratic), Oklahoma (5-0 Republican), Utah (4-0 Republican)

There is an ongoing and slow-moving legal matter in Utah that could eventually result in the Democrats gaining a seat (it would be fairly easy to draw a Democratic-leaning seat in the heart of Salt Lake County, but the county is now split among the state’s four Republican-held congressional districts). Nebraska Republicans, meanwhile, could try to shore up the open NE-2 in Omaha, which is currently the best Democratic offensive target in the House following the retirement of Rep. Don Bacon (R). There’s not much to say about the other states.

The Republican South with Democratic Pockets: Alabama (5-2 Republican), Georgia (9-5 Republican), Louisiana (4-2 Republican), Mississippi (3-1 Republican), South Carolina (6-1 Republican), Tennessee (7-1 Republican with a vacancy in a Likely Republican-rated district):

These are all Republican states where the only Democratic districts are substantially or majority Black. None seem like candidates for elective Republican re-draws by state legislatures in the near-term. The U.S. Supreme Court was set to rule on whether a new, majority-Black district in Louisiana represented an impermissible racial gerrymander; they punted the case to the next term, so perhaps there will be an important ruling to come on racial redistricting sometime over the next year.

Court-drawn maps with divided government: Minnesota (4-4 split), Pennsylvania (10-7 Republican), Wisconsin (6-2 Republican)

All three states are operating under divided government with congressional maps drawn by courts; if either side obtained a governing trifecta in 2026, it’s possible to imagine new maps in these states for 2028. But that appears to be a post-2026 question. Democrats mentioned Minnesota as a state where they are exploring their redistricting options in a recent CNN report from Manu Raju and Sarah Ferris, but we don’t see how that would happen: The state House, at full strength, is tied between the parties—and there is a Democratic vacancy right now because of the shocking assassination of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) last month. The state Senate, meanwhile, has a 34-33 Democratic edge at full strength, but state Sen. Nicole Mitchell (D) said she will be resigning soon after being convicted of burglarizing her stepmother’s house (and a Republican senator just died, setting up another special election). Assuming both sides hold serve in the eventual special elections, Democrats don’t have the majorities in both chambers they presumably would need to push through a remap. In Wisconsin, the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court recently decided not to intervene against the congressional map there, which is a court-drawn variant of a previous Republican gerrymander (conservatives controlled the court back when the current Wisconsin map was drawn). But the court potentially could intervene in the future. Pennsylvania’s Democratic-majority state Supreme Court intervened against a Republican gerrymander in advance of 2018 and, amidst continued divided government, drew another reasonably balanced map for this decade.

Commission states: Arizona (6-2 Republican with one vacancy in a Safe Democratic seat), Colorado (4-4 split), Michigan (7-6 Republican), New Jersey (9-3 Democratic), Virginia (5-5 split, with a vacancy in a Safe Democratic seat), Washington (8-2 Democratic)

Colorado and Virginia stand out as commission states that have helped Republicans this decade: Had voters in those states not amended their constitutions to create new redistricting systems in statewide votes that were then used for post-2020 redistricting, Democrats likely would have been able to create better maps in both states (Virginia has a divided government now but had unified Democratic control in the 2021 calendar year; Colorado has had a unified Democratic government for several cycles). Democrats could try to unwind these systems by going back to the voters, but that’s a tricky and uncertain process and, in the case of Virginia, it would take at least a couple of years because of the need for two separate sessions of the legislature to vote to put a constitutional amendment in front of voters, much like the aforementioned process in New York (Virginia’s map is actually court-drawn because the new commission there failed to produce a map back in 2021—it could have been included in the previous category but we put it here because it is technically a commission state). New Jersey and Washington are also commission states where Democrats who otherwise control the state governments would run into state constitutional challenges, and Democrats have healthy advantages in these delegations already. Arizona has an arguably Republican-leaning commission-drawn map this decade after the 2010s map arguably leaned toward Democrats, but it also has divided government. Michigan also has a politically-balanced commission-drawn map and a divided state government. Overall, none of these states seem to be likely candidates for a new map in 2026.

States with just two districts: Hawaii (2-0 Democratic), Idaho (2-0 Republican), Maine (2-0 Democratic), Montana (2-0 Republican), New Hampshire (2-0 Democratic), Rhode Island (2-0 Democratic), West Virginia (2-0 Republican)

The state that stands out here is New Hampshire, where Republicans control state government but Democrats hold both House seats. Former Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) refused to go along with a Republican gerrymander proposed by the legislature in 2022 that would have given Republicans a better chance to win a district in the state; new Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) suggested back in December that she was not interested in a new congressional map, but what if Trump were to insist on one to try to get a more winnable district in the state?

States with just a single congressional district: Alaska (1-0 Republican), Delaware (1-0 Democratic), North Dakota (1-0 Republican), South Dakota (1-0 Republican), Vermont (1-0 Democratic), Wyoming (1-0 Republican)

These states only have a single member elected statewide, so there is no redistricting to be done.

Conclusion

What emerges from this state-by-state overview is that beyond Texas and Ohio, Republicans appear to have some other places where they hypothetically could attempt redraws just by the state legislatures and governors deciding that they want new maps, likely with the urging of Trump. Democrats, meanwhile, generally have many more obstacles in the states they control. How this all plays out is a hugely important question for House control in 2026. It’s possible that Republicans could gerrymander several states, Democrats could fail to draw new maps in any of their states, and 2026 could still produce a big enough wave to elect a Democratic House. But in an era where partisanship is more predictable than in the past and House majorities have been small, any district changes could be important, and Republicans have more obvious opportunities to gerrymander than Democrats.

We want to close by just noting the tenuous nature of all of this. States that we think can redraw might not; states that we think cannot redraw might find a way, motivated by political will.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.